Learning Objectives:

Describe their own experience with thoughts/images changing their subjective emotional state

Identify 2-3 situation to apply a grounding practice

Outline at least one benefit of "training" via practicing the use of imagery

Through it all, the mountain just sits, experiencing change in each moment, constantly changing, yet always just being itself. It remains still as the seasons flow into one another and as the weather changes moment by moment and day by day, calmness abiding all change…- Jon Kabat-Zinn -

Using Imagery to Access the Body/Mind Feedback Loop to Evoke Positive Emotion

Everyone knows that how you feel physically affects how you feel emotionally and influences what you think about a situation.

When you're sick, tired, hungry, etc., everything feels worse

If you're already experiencing anxiety and worry, they worsen when you aren't feeling your best

There's no perfect "off switch" (you can't talk yourself out of the way you feel), but you can influence your physical and emotional states through a "side door."

Did you know you can intentionally create positive physical, mental, and emotional states by deliberately inducing them in your imagination? The same areas of the brain activated during an actual life experience "turn on" when we induce positive emotion via imagery that evokes those poistive life experiences. If done repeatedly, these cortical areas grow more neural connections and get stronger. This strength, in turn, can lessen our vulnerability to worry, distress, agitation because we

develop a greater "reservoir" to "roll with" stress without getting as upset, sort-of like dissolving a teaspoon of salt in water. Think of how much saltier the water would be if you used a cup of water vs a gallon of water.

deepen the ability to re-balance when we do get overwhelmed.

become better-able to accept intense feelings without fighting them, so not freaking out about freaking out, or worrying about worrying.

Our non-rational minds respond well to images that evoke feelings, sense memory, and this strength is worth embracing. The non-rational mind loves metaphor.​Last, as in previous and future sessions, posture counts. Sitting in a proud way, or fully supported in a lying down position, can evoke the images about which you are imagining, and can deepen the practice.

Imagery & the Emotional Mind

Imagery can speak to our non-rational "emotional minds" using metaphor (e.g., you are a mountain, you are a lake), so employing imagery as a technique is an important mindfulness tool to have handy in the toolbox. For many, it can be more effective than logic to create and strengthen positive emotional states. In this session, we'll be using two different imagery practices borrowed from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). These practices are aimed at cultivating equanimity (evenness of mind especially under stress) and acceptance (it's okay to have strong emotion). These practices are

Mountain meditation: stable and enduring as the seasons pass, with storms, fired, mudslides, visitors who like/dislike the mountain come and go. This practice is a metaphor for worry, pain, anger, judgment, all passing emotions and experience

Lake meditation: natural for the surface to be sometimes smooth (calm) and sometimes choppy (distress), always below the surface is the quiet depth of the lake, just like we have internal reserves of awareness.

I grew up with the smell of the lake and the feeling of the woods.-Steven Tyler-

Let's give it a try

Mountain Meditation

Posture: This is a seated meditation in which posture is an important part of the experience. Your body will be seared like a mountain (at the beginning, the audio will describe how to sit), inviting a sense of stability. This is a 15-minute practice.

Mountain Meditation

Lake Meditation

Posture: This meditation is generally done lying down, but can be done in a seated position. If you wish to lie down, but often experience back soreness, some options are to place a pillow or rolled up blanket under your knees or thighs to relieve pressure on the back. Other lying variations:

back and head on the floor with calves and feet on a chair, thighs at a 90 degree angle to the floor and chair back

Lying on the floor with bottom against the wall and legs up the wall in a 90 degree angle.

This practice is about 20 minutes long.

Lake Meditation

How was that?

How were these experiences?When could it be useful to do these practices at school? Home? Work? When with friends and family?How might it help to have more acceptance of passing thoughts and emotions, including the unpleasant or undesirable ones?

In the next week

Try to do one or both of these practices a couple of times.

Do a formal breathing practice on the days when you don't do a mountain or lake meditation.

Do several informal breathing practices during the day.

If you are doing this practice for class credit/extra credit, print the sheet below to complete and turn in to your instructor.